PNE Fans' Panel view from Tim Mercer: Hecky should go with a vote of thanks

​It is not with any great joy for this fan that the inevitable has happened within 24 hours of me putting my quill to use for those who are generous enough to read my scribblings.

For me, such an appalling set of results, and the threat of relegation that comes with it, has been in the pipeline for at least two or three previous cycles of the man in the hot seat.

I will never forget the exasperation of Alex Neil, in his last interview back in March 2021, when he said he didn’t have a ‘Scooby Doo’ what his best side was. I felt at the time that he hadn’t been backed and that his squad had been incrementally weakened over the course of his time at the club.

In a way we got lucky that his deputy, Frankie McAvoy, staved off relegation that season when appointed initially as an interim boss. Some unexpected wins away sealed our safety and resulted in McAvoy being given the job full time.

However, the systemic issues of having one of the smallest budgets within the division remained and again it was no surprise when a serious of poor results led to his demise.

Next up was Ryan Lowe. Too cocky by half for a section of the fans in a simmering rift that never fully healed, he did put together some remarkable runs. This included six straight wins at the start of the 2023-24 season that saw us all with nose bleeds at the top of the table.

However, it has to be said that at least half of those wins were ‘lucky’, with us playing very poorly despite the results. It happens sometimes; it’s just football.

Regardless of your opinions on Lowe’s talent and suitability to be a Championship manager at Preston North End, the underinvestment continued to eat away at the squads’ quality and he clearly felt the pressure when deciding to resign after a summer that should have given him renewed hope of new players coming in through the door.

It clearly didn’t, and the manner of handing in his cards after just the first match of the 2024-25 season should have set alarm bells ringing.

Enter Paul Heckingbottom, with a good record like Alex Neil of getting a side out of this blasted tier to a place we have not been since 1961! It was too late to add to the squad, but Paul knew this and appeared to accept it with good grace, clearly confident in his ability to get a tune out of the set of players at his disposal.

That season progressed as expected, with my fellow fans around me joking that it was going to be another season of mid-table mediocrity. In truth, this gallows humour was borne out of the fact that deep down inside we all really knew we should be lucky to finish 12th, given the flooding of parachute payments to most of our competitors over many years… a bite of the pie we have never had.

But then something changed, as we seemed to be hell bent on snatching relegation out of the jaws of that mid-table position in the latter half of the season, with loss after loss when only a simple win with eight games to go would have seen us safe.

A draw away at Bristol City in the last match just staved off the drop and with me noting in my report from the previous game (a home loss to relegated Plymouth): “For me it is the structural weaknesses within the club that are the chickens finally coming home to roost. You can’t keep on being in the bottom four and lower in terms of squad value, wages etc. and expect to be able to be competitive season after season.”

The following season saw an attempt to break the pattern by Heckingbottom, with a large turnover of the squad, albeit within the usual confined budget and dependency on loans of young, but higher quality players from the Premier League to plug the gaps. Initially it brought decent progress, with us going into the New Year of 2026 in a good position and looking like play-off contenders. Indeed, an away win at Bristol City on January 4 consolidated our position and we seemed to have cracked the conundrum of being competitive on very little money.

However, as we all now know, this was the start of our dreadful run that has yielded only five – yes five – league wins up to the time of writing in September 2026.

By the end of last season, I again noted in the final loss to Southampton: “When you are third from bottom of the Championship in terms of spend, there will inevitably be a point when you finish third from bottom! This, I would argue, is just a simple fact.”

It was therefore both a relief and surprise when talk of a takeover by a Saudi-American businessman coincided with some real investment in the squad and pitch, including smashing our transfer record by a factor of nearly three to bring in last season’s loan signing from Tottenham Hotspur, Alfie Divine, on a permanent deal.

Unfortunately, most of the new players only came in at the back end of the window with the season already up and running. There seems to be some quality in the new arrivals, but it was at the cost of freeing up spaces with the sales of established players such as Ben Whiteman and Milutin Osmajić.

For me, losing six games out of the first seven in a new season can only result in a parting of ways, but I still thank Hecky for his time at our club. Why? Well, if nothing else he made it clear to the board that continued underinvestment was a ticking time bomb waiting to happen and I think he helped in pushing forward plans for a new injection of cash.

Without doubt, given our position already in a relegation fight, the next appointment will be one of the most critical in the club’s recent history.

Already there is the expected speculation on social media around previous Championship people who have had success, such as Rob Edwards and Scott Parker, the call for a former North End hero, Graham Alexander, and a high risk option in the form of Steven Gerrard.

Can I dare hope that an equivalent to David Moyes or Billy Davies will ‘emerge’ as a saviour? The truth is it is often not possible to predict.

For example, a lot of the fanbase were disgruntled when Moyes was appointed because of his managerial inexperience. I was lucky at the time of having had a deep and long conversation with him at a shareholders’ meeting when he was assistant to Gary Peters and being ignored in a corner of the room.

He told me that he had decided very early in his career that he’d made some serious errors that stopped him progressing as a player and so set about to learn all coaching aspects of the game and to observe what works and what doesn’t work. He illustrated it with a lesson on corners to me and the only other fan talking to him!

Needless to say, I was impressed and was desperate to see him appointed after Peters.

Only time will tell, but this fan is just crossing his fingers that such a person can be found again.